Part 4 (1/2)

It is really strange that with the English prose Bible before them, critics should have insisted on the metrical element in poetry. And one must add that parallelisms are not the fundamental features of poetry.

The poetry of Isaiah and David would have been poetry without a single parallelism. But we need not go to the prophets or the Psalms, where we have parallelism, for poetry in the Bible: we have it in the narrative portions, in the stories of Ruth and Joseph. Who does not feel the poetical emotions surge through him as he comes to the forty-fifth chapter of _Genesis_, where Joseph reveals himself to his brothers?

Fearing they will be dismayed because they sold him, he a.s.sures them that their criminal deed was just what has enabled him to become a ruler and save them from starvation. A poet was he who wrote this chapter beginning with the lines:

Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all that stood by him; and he cried, ”Cause every man to go out from me.” And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known to his brethren, etc.

We must always remember that the emotional appeal whether in prose or verse is the same to us. We do not get one kind of ecstasy by reading poetical prose and another kind by reading verse. Our inner soul is stirred, our aesthetic faculties are touched in the same way if we read a beautiful love letter like one in prose of Eloise's, or a love poem in verse. And it may be said here that no poet has improved upon those prose epistles by changing them into metrical form. An idea colored with emotion and a beautiful description give us the same effects in prose as they do in verse. The test of poetry is in our own souls.

We can find poetry in the most unexpected places, and the reader who wants to look for it will be able to see that poets like Wordsworth and Whitman were poets in their prose critical prefaces as well as in the _Lyrical Ballads_ and _Leaves of Gra.s.s_. As a matter of fact, Whitman used paragraphs from his critical essays, word for word, in _Leaves of Gra.s.s_, but arranged in free verse form.

It is true that at times the poetry cannot be distilled, as it were, from the body of a prose work; a particular pa.s.sage cannot be lifted up and called poetry, though it be such (dependent, however, on what goes before and after). For example, every reader is thrilled with emotion when he comes to the conclusion of the chapter in _Vanity Fair_, where Amelia Sedley is praying for George Osborne, who was lying dead on his face with a bullet through his heart. This line is poetry, but only by reason of our taking it into consideration with earlier parts of the novel. It could not be published alone, for it would be meaningless.

But the same is true of poetry in verse. When Horatio says of Hamlet ”now cracks a n.o.ble heart,” and hopes that flights of angels will sing him to his rest, the pa.s.sage is effective only because we have lived with Hamlet and felt with him and admired him. Printed alone the words would mean little. The poetry of a great novel, like that of a verse play, is not always in isolated pa.s.sages, but in the entire novel or play from which it cannot be extracted by quotation.

All lovers of poetry cannot help being indebted to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who showed he knew what const.i.tutes poetry when he composed the famous _Oxford Book of English Verse_. But one is grieved that one must differ with him when it comes to literary criticism. In his book on the _Art of Writing_ there is a chapter called ”On the Difference Between Verse and Prose” which justifies inversion of the natural order of words in verse and affirms that this inversion (of course along with metre and rhyme at will) is the difference between verse and prose. He uses the old ill.u.s.tration that rhyme, metre and inversion help the memory, and that since the first poets sang their poems to the harp, and music and emotion were introduced, everything is changed down to the natural order of the words.

Now, aside from the fact that not all of the earliest emotional compositions were sung to the harp, it is admitted on all sides that poetry is no longer written primarily to be sung to the harp. Hence there is no further necessity for this inversion of words. The natural order of prose should be retained in emotional writing, with occasional deviations. But most certainly this inversion does not const.i.tute the difference between poetry and non-poetry even if it often does make verse different from prose.

Sir Arthur gives us a few lines of Milton in the inverse order in which they were written and says they are verse with the accent of poetry. He then rewrites them in prose order. The inference is that they no longer have that accent of poetry. They are not poetry in the prose version, however, because they were not poetry in the original verse order. He takes four lines from the second book of _Paradise Regained_, describing Christ's ascent up a hill, and gives us a prose paraphrase of them. Here are the lines as Milton wrote them:

Up to a hill anon his steps he reared From whose high top to ken the prospect round, If cottage were in view, sheep-cote or herd; But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw.

Here is Quiller-Couch's prose rendering:

Thereupon he climbed a hill on the chance that the view from its summit might disclose some sign of human habitation--a herd, a sheep-cote, a cottage perhaps. But he could see nothing of the sort.

This prose paraphrase really proves that the original had no touch of poetry. Because the pa.s.sage as written in metre uses poetic diction like ”anon,” and ”ken,” employs inversion like ”steps he reared,” ”none he saw,” it is a.s.sumed that the pa.s.sage must be poetry, but it is not, for it lacks ecstasy. It is merely one of the prosaic pa.s.sages in a composition that contains poems, and is needed to bridge over the poems.

A prose paraphrase or explanation of a verse poem is always interesting in helping us understand the nature of poetry. For example, Hearn, a poet himself, took up many English poems and paraphrased and explained them to his j.a.panese students. Some of his paraphrases are actually greater poems than the originals. Most of the great poems in literature have been a.n.a.lyzed or paraphrased by biographers and commentators. No one calls these paraphrases poetry. But are we sure that they are not?

Are we certain that none of the original emotion or ideas are left intact in the paraphrase? On the contrary, I believe that the poetry still remains in the paraphrase. True, often the manner of expressing an idea or emotion is what counts in making it poetry, but expression alone does not make poetry. Even a metrical, emotional and beautiful utterance of a commonplace idea sometimes becomes poetry, but I cannot concede that the prose version of a great verse poem may not be poetry if still emotionally expressed.

Let me take a concrete instance. The following pa.s.sage from _Paradise Lost_ is considered, no doubt justly, poetry, because of the idea, the emotion and the rhythm (academically speaking):

What though the field be lost?

All is not lost; the unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield, And what is else not to be overcome.

Let us paraphrase this pa.s.sage and try to retain the idea, the emotion and a prose rhythm by just changing a few words.

And suppose we lost the battle? We have not lost everything.

We still have our unconquerable will, our plans for revenge, our eternal hatred, and courage never to give in or surrender, and above all never to be defeated.

Is this pa.s.sage poetry or not? I submit that it is, if the original is.

It is rhythmical (though it doesn't have to be so), the original idea is there, and the pa.s.sion of the speaker has not been rooted out. All this proves, then, that much of what we call poetry in verse is either not poetry at all or that there is more poetry in the prose of the world than we ever imagined.

Is there any poetry in Lamb's _Tales from Shakespeare_? Beyond doubt; just as there is poetry in the tales and histories from which Shakespeare drew his plays. Is there not poetry in the critical discourses about poets where the critic loses himself in the poet's emotions and becomes that poet and gives you his spirit, as, for example, Carlyle does in his study of Burns, or Symonds in his _Greek Poets_?

All this leads to one conclusion: that we should not be concerned as to whether a piece of literature is or is not something that may be included in a definition of poetry, but whether it is a humane, ecstatic, emotional, thoughtful piece of writing. Do not be worried where the poetry is. Rest a.s.sured it is there somewhere, for we should judge poetry by the effect on us and not by the compliance with rules of rhythm or any other rules of composition. And all great literature which has a similar emotional effect upon us, whether it is in verse or prose, has poetry in it. Walt Whitman did not insist that his _Leaves of Gra.s.s_ be called poetry; yet that is what it turns out to be.

The reader may reply that if poetry is to be found to a large extent in the prose of the world, all distinctions are broken down as to what poetry is and is not, and you might as well look for it in the stories in the newspapers. I gladly accept the challenge: there is poetry in the newspapers. When the _Spoon River Anthology_ appeared many critics said it was nothing more than a collection of newspaper obituaries, told in the first person, that differed from news items only in that the lines were printed as free verse, and that therefore it was no more poetry than a newspaper story. On the contrary, it would have been poetry had it appeared as prose in a newspaper.

I have no doubt many readers will recall newspaper stories that moved them like a poem. Those especially well written ones of love tragedies are often poetry; by virtue of their ecstatic nature they arouse our emotions.